Published: February 11, 2026
By Movieguide® Staff
The Minions are back in the new adventure, MINIONS & MONSTERS!
“MINIONS & MONSTERS, from Illumination, tells the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story of how the Minions conquered Hollywood, became movie stars, lost everything, unleashed monsters onto the world and then banded together to try and save the planet from the mayhem they had just created,” a description of the movie reads.
This is the third MINIONS movie and the seventh overall installment in the DESPICABLE ME franchise.
MINIONS & MONSTERS will be directed by Pierre Coffin, who directed the first three DESPICABLE ME movies, as well as the first MINIONS movie. Brian Lynch (MINIONS, MINIONS: RISE OF GRU) wrote the script, while Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri serves as producer.
The first DESPICABLE ME movie premiered in 2010, and each movie in the franchise has performed well with audiences.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, DESPICABLE ME 4 director Chris Renaud shared his thoughts on the longevity of the franchise.
“What’s interesting with DESPICABLE ME over these last 15 years is, the kids that saw the first one when they were 5 to 10 years old — which is that really impressionable age when you go to the movies — they carry it with them as something that’s theirs,” he explained. “I’ve had a couple of nice experiences where I’m speaking to a class, and young high school kids will come up to me and say how much the movies mean to them. It’s very gratifying.”
Speaking to NBC, Renaud shared the challenges of keeping the franchise fresh, saying, “The tricky part becomes trying to find fresh ideas while keeping it something that the audience knows and enjoys.”
“It’s not to say that every idea has to be completely unique and new, but you definitely don’t want to be feeling that you’re doing the same thing over and over again because the audience will certainly get wise to that,” he continued. “The ideas you’re introducing start getting more complicated to some degree and so, how do you keep that all working and balance the different aspects of the story?”
While the MINIONS movies have always done well at the box office, they strayed from DESPICABLE ME’s original redemptive message, which Movieguide®’s review described as “a story of redemption, a story about the transforming power of love.”
Hopefully, MINIONS & MONSTERS will recapture that element of redemption.
MINIONS & MONSTERS premieres July 1.
Read Next: DESPICABLE ME 4 Is One of the Most Successful Movies Ever
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